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My wife is a weather fanatic, so I got her a LaCrosse station about eighteen years ago. It worked and the PC interface was nice, but it only lasted six or seven years. I replaced it with a Davis Vantage Vue and it's been good, but had to be repaired about five years ago. That sort of thing has to be expected from time to time, I guess. It's a damn good unit.

Both farmers on my land have several placed throughout the farms. I haven’t paid attention to the name brand but they are 2 different models. I have apps on my phone which allow me to monitor data, both here on this farm as well as the other farm which is 200 miles up the road. Best thing about them from my perspective is that I don’t have to wonder about rainfall amounts. I haven’t asked what they cost.

Those are easy, lots of stuff reacts to moisture by expanding and contracting.

I've had greenhouse vents that opened and closed with a strip of leather. Wet, the leather relaxes and expands which would close the vents. After drying out the leather contracts opening the vents.
In that instance, gravity assisted in the closing of the vents, open would be their default status.

Rain Bird sells a device today that shuts off your lawn sprinkler if it's raining, it's just a stack of cork disc's that swell when wet and close your water valve, once dried the valve is wide open.

Anytime you can create movement it can be manipulated through unique linkage or gear reduction and possibly springs.

The slightest turn of a tiny gear that's in position to turn a series of larger and larger gears can create as much movement as you desire, just keep adding larger gears.

The weather device you point at with your link might be a lot more like your grandmother's than you think.

I don't see anywhere that it calls for batteries?

It's operated by a strand of twisted gut that spins the turntable the figurines are affix to when expanded or contracted by humidity.

Your question is very relevant to this thread, weather detection and prediction isn't all rocket science you know.

I got an Accu-Rite.

Mostly for the continuous rain gauge function.

It's nice, and I've come to depend on it quite a bit.

Don't really need anything more advanced.

I just roll over in bed and click this link from wherever I might be at the time. Years worth of detailed weather history.

Home Weather Station

mine is one of those LaCrosse units. All I expect of it is a rough guess as to what is happening. I can look out to see if it's raining. I can step out to gauge the temp. I don't really value high accuracy with weather info.

Yeah, but you're in Florida. Humidity is a given at 90%+ and so is the temperature. Also a given is the 3:15 pm thunderstorm. With abundant lightning.

Sam, just hang a sign on your wall that says "Hot & Muggy." Never needs batteries!

Thanks, that makes sense, guess I hadn't given it enough thought.

The one I linked looked most like the one my grandmother had (at least in my foggy memory). I had looked at a couple of others and they were battery operated so I mixed them up when I was typing my question.

drover

Sad that we've come to expect failures of electronic type equipment. Probably due to all the features included in one unit.

I remember one Monkey Wards AM/FM/Weather, and I think it may have even had a Marine Band, radio I had for 20+ years and the only issue was I somehow snapped the antenna and had to piece it together with a coat hanger. If I hadn't lost it in one of my many moves, it likely would still be working.

Now, I get that LaCross unit in 2017 or so and by 2020/21 they are no longer supporting the rain gauge when it went out.

First world problems I guess.

I have an Acurite also and it keeps me happy with accurate weather info. But being a real weather nut, I know Davis is the way to go!

Do you guys have your Davis stations hooked up to the internet? There are a lot of them in Montana, but most people don't keep them working as good as needed. How about cameras? Any of those ?

I wish this subject hadn't ben been brought up! Now I am going to have to sell something to buy what I need!

Mine isn't connected. If I remember, that was an extra-cost option and I declined it. I'm only a few miles from the Ogden Airport official weather reporting station, so adding my unit's readings wouldn't be of much value.

I think it is the complexity, Geno. An old radio like that might have had a couple or three dozen transistors in it and a dozen or so diodes. This microprocessor-controlled stuff could have many thousands of semiconductors etched in various chips. Newer stuff these days is even more complex. Lots of places for potential failure. I think it really depends on the manufacturing class of the product, too. An example of high reliability is avionics (Class 3) The stuff will fail occasionally, but it's still extraordinarily reliable compared to consumer electronics (Class 1)---which in itself is usually fairly reliable.

Aint that a di-beetus machine?

20 years with my Vantage Pro2, notta problem......yet.

Cool

I took meteorology, climatology, watershed modeling, natural hazards, quantitative geological data analysis.

Did my exit on radial ice accretion, ice loads, probability-and return intervals, Rosemont ice detection systems

I had an outside station but squirrels chewed up my anemometer.
I just bug off from the live station over at the university that our dept erected.

OK, I'm gonna cheat here. Below is a re-post from a previous but recent obscure thread.

I firmly feel I can predict/detect local tornados in my area due to data from my personal weather station.

Tornados are nasty buggers and not easily predicted.

If you read up on it, our weather alert systems are quite dependent on people calling and reporting them once they touch down before they even send out warnings.

I just use what I learn to gain a few minutes of time to secure my own property and myself.

Call me crazy if you want but I somewhat predicted SpaceX's delayed launch day before yesterday from my weather station data and personal observations, ask Rocky.

I posted my thoughts right here in these threads before SpaceX even mentioned the problem and called the delay.

RE-POST STARTS HERE...

I had the wind cups break off of the one I have in Akaska, it's sitting right on the Bering Sea shoreline.
The cups sheared off during a fall storm, the last recorded wind data read 102mph, it exceeded its limit.

I wish they had a pressure drop alarm that was easy to set.

I'm alway up and monitoring these squalls that blow in off the gulf.
It's daily this time of year and the most of them are extremely violent but short lived. Most often the associated lighting and thunder goes non-stop as they pass over. They are typically gone in a matter of a few minutes, the rain can be anywhere from fractional to a few inches.

You can scroll back through my online data and see last month on the 23rd at 7:29pm it was raining 5.49 inches an hour, we received 2 inches of rain inside a 20 minute window and then the storm was gone.

I'll boot up a radar image on a 30 inch monitor I have and watch these storms out over the bay from a picture window in my living room, they're amazing.

They are interesting to see but it's pressure drop on my weather stations monitor that I pay close attention to.

I can tell when one of these squalls has spawned a tornado by a rapid extreme pressure drop.

One of the last significant tornados I watched form was back in March, the pressure had dropped like a rock, it was right over me. I didn't know exactly where it might touch down but I knew it was close. I went out and secured anything loose and moved the rigs and rvs out from under the trees.

It touched down a few short miles north of me, by the time I got back inside it was on the news...

 Tornado with winds up to 110 MPH originated in Dunnellon and tore through southwest and central Marion County on the morning of March 12, causing more than $15 million in property damage...

....The National Weather Service radar system in Jacksonville, which typically triggers Alert Marion, has been down for planned maintenance/upgrade.

No Tornado warnings had gone out...



These tornados can result in unpredicted tidal surges that have a lot of effect on us here along the coast.

One of the most significant tornado created tidal surges with truly sad results I watched develop on this weather station was just to the south of me by 2 miles, I was up all night monitoring, it hit at 3am.

It was 2007 when a unpredicted tidal surge killed every Whooping Crane that Operation Migration had just lead in from Wisconsin.



They'd just brought in the Class of 2006, apparently the first year Cranes don't mix well with the Cranes coming in on their own from previous years. They all return to the exact spot they had originally been lead to like Salmon would to their home stream.
They put the 1st year birds in cages to wait until the senior birds dispersed.
The tidal surge hit and they all drown in their cages in wee hours of the morning.

That storm didn't stop there, it traveled 70 miles inland with winds topping 160mph killing 21 people and doing over $200 million in damages.




Oct 16, 2018 brought us Hurricane Michael, I did a all nighter for that one too.
Watching for a pressure drop and/or a storm surge.
It passed me right by out in the gulf with small effect but I sat and watched it do a direct hit on Mexico Beach.
I knew the town well and knew it wasn't gonna be pretty.

I was monitoring every storm chaser blog I could find online for early news and images. It took forever, power was out in Mexico Beach and for miles in both directions.
The crazy guys out there driving around and filming had to go for miles to get a connection to upload their videos.

Just like one would figure, there was nothing left..



So, this personal weather station is a lot of fun but really it's more of a tool for me.

Sure isn't - instead it's all thermodynamics and fluid mechanics.👍

Indeed it is. After my first semester of Met 101 - where I learned about such neat things as adiabatic lapse rates and orographic uplift - the course required thermodynamics and differential equations. That left me out COMPLETELY, being math impaired as I am. But in my pilot years, I could look at a weather chart and know what it all meant. I could even make halfway decent forecasts of the big picture. Sadly, all the notation seems to have changed over half a century and most of what I see now on aviation weather sites is almost gibberish. However, I can look at a pattern of isobars and know pretty much what's coming. It's rewarding.